Representation of women in the field of legislative politics is remarkably small and the absence of women has wide-ranging ramifications. In Fall 2019, we surveyed 361 women that we identified as studying legislative politics within political science to understand why women’s representation in legislative studies is so low and what we can do about it. We found that many women study legislatures, but they do not always identify as scholars of legislative studies, often do not join the Legislative Studies Section, and tend to prioritize other journals over Legislative Studies Quarterly, the official journal of the section. In this article, we discuss several solutions to the problem of women’s underrepresentation in legislative studies, including the new Women in Legislative Studies initiative.

This study examines the division of labor among political scientists during different periods of the COVID-19 pandemic. The article explores the hypothesis that the pandemic increased inequalities, especially by exacerbating the burden of housework and care responsibilities for women. We ground our analysis on the results of two surveys conducted in Brazil: one shortly after the onset of the pandemic in June 2020; and the other, more recently, from March 2022, after the ending of social-distancing measures. Brazil is a relevant case study because it was an epicenter of the virus for many months. This public health crisis occurred while a denialist and authoritarian government was in power. Considering gender and race variables, the data show a transformation of the dynamics of time organization during the period. At the beginning of the pandemic, men—primarily white men—devoted more time to academic work; in 2022, the most substantive difference was one of race. We observed a greater convergence among white people, as opposed to Black people, about household chores, with the latter group more overloaded than the former group. Traditional class and race inequalities concerning the Brazilian population can contribute to the explanation for this. When in-person work returned, white political scientists began to outsource domestic care more than their nonwhite counterparts.

What are the opportunities and challenges of faculty–undergraduate collaborative scholarship that involves student participation at every stage of the research process? Drawing on interviews with comparative politics faculty members and undergraduate students, this article discusses the themes of reciprocity, incentives, and “off-ramps.” First, we find that an unequal division of labor can give way to a more reciprocal work dynamic as long-term projects unfold. Second, we consider the use of incremental incentives to sustain student motivation. Third, we propose the creation of off-ramps to allow an undergraduate to gracefully exit a project early. Grounded in these themes, we argue that—with a few guardrails—faculty members and undergraduate students can benefit from long-term collaborative research projects, including those that involve fieldwork or that seek to publish peer-reviewed articles.

Data Laboratories (Data Labs)—by which we mean a collaborative, group-based research program that can be conducted inside and/or outside of the classroom and is designed to generate observational datasets—have numerous advantages for undergraduate learning and scholarly research. Undergraduate researchers in Data Labs learn about the actual process of collecting and constructing research-quality data—a skillset that is relevant for both academic and workplace opportunities but otherwise under-covered in most undergraduate political science degrees. This article discusses our experiences in founding and running Data Labs, general guidelines for effective lab structure, positive impacts on undergraduate learning and research output, and challenges to consider.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in mask mandates on college campuses across the United States, and the reasons for disagreement with them by students in conservative regions are unknown. This study sought to explain the affective, behavioral, and cognitive (ABC) components of college students’ attitudes toward wearing a mask in the classroom according to the ABC model of attitude formation. Participants (N = 40) responded to eight open-ended, anonymous written interview prompts, which were coded and themed according to the grounded theory of qualitative research. Results indicated that cognitions about masking in general were varied, even among students in a predominantly conservative region. Participant cognitions about wearing a mask in the classroom ranged from the desire to protect self and others to discomfort and annoyance. Participants frequently reported experiences of negative affect while wearing a mask in the classroom, with perceived isolation reported as the most frequent issue related to negative affect. Participants frequently reported less classroom participation because of the mandate to wear a mask in the classroom, but they also frequently reported that they complied despite the cognitive and affective problems due to their desire to obey, social responsibility, and values regarding the care of others.

Political scientists rely on complex software to conduct research, and much of the software they use is written and distributed for free by other researchers. This article contends that creating and maintaining these public goods is costly for individual software developers but that it is not adequately incentivized by the academic community. We demonstrate that statistical software is used widely but rarely cited in political science, and we highlight a partial solution to this problem: software bibliographies. To facilitate their creation, we introduce softbib, an R package that scans analysis scripts, detects the software used in those scripts, and automatically creates bibliographies. We hope that recognizing the contribution of software developers to science will encourage more scholars to create public goods, which could yield important downstream benefits.

It is quite an honor to be selected for this John Gaus Award Lecture by a committee of my peers. I want to thank my husband, Bill Berry—my partner for 48 years and sometimes coauthor—and certainly my children, Katie Berry and David Berry, who have diverted my attention from policy studies for 35 years now and made life much more enjoyable by their personalities. I especially want to thank my many coauthors who have kept research and writing an engaging endeavor while we have developed friendships that will last a lifetime.

Committees from the American Political Science Association (APSA) on the status of graduate students in political science conducted digital surveys in 2018, 2020, and 2022. Distributed using listservs from APSA, the surveys asked about a range of realities facing graduate students including employment opportunities, industry or academic support, and overall well-being. Analysis of the data pre-, during-, and post-pandemic revealed high anxiety in 2018 as part of students’ experience looking for jobs. By 2020 and 2022, anxiety worsened, such that the well-being of graduate students in political science should be addressed. We recommend a change in the structure of graduate academic programs to include stronger institutional support and an emphasis on alternative paths for work that does not entail teaching at an academic institution.

This case study reviews a social movement course that centered on a 10-week simulation of a contemporary contentious event in Washington, DC, involving six movement organizations and four police agencies. To our knowledge, it is the first classroom simulation of a Trump-era police–protester contentious episode or of any political science simulation that places an episode of insurrection in the contemporary United States. Three goals animated this project: (1) promote learning concerning extra-institutional political conflict in the American case; (2) combine scholarship and role playing to explore the dynamic interaction of movement, countermovement, and enforcement organizations; and (3) teach the complex relationship between social science theory and political practice in an engaging way. Students used theoretical frameworks drawn from the literature to assess and develop protest capacity and repertoires for their assigned organization and chose strategic goals and tactical means to attempt to generate political leverage. Student organizations made concurrent “moves” and instructors iteratively developed the contentious episode. This article discusses the results of students’ evaluations of the simulation. In addition to extensive online appendices, it provides a detailed explanation and design for instructors who are considering a similar approach.

This study examines undergraduate research experiences at a minority-serving institution (MSI) in a political science laboratory. Students contributed to projects in a collaborative research lab at the University of California Riverside that involves undergraduate and graduate students in projects related to health and politics. Adopting a participatory approach to research, the study’s research participants also are coauthors who co-created the research protocols; collected the data; transcribed, coded, and analyzed the data; and wrote up the findings. Our analysis of 12 in-depth interviews with current and former undergraduate research assistants (RAs) found that their work in the lab challenged their perceptions of what research is and what it means to do research; shaped their path to pursue graduate studies; developed their social and professional skills; and offered an inclusive and humanizing experience with graduate students and faculty members. Challenges that the RAs mentioned included time management, bureaucratic accounting and payroll procedures, and feelings of self-doubt; the lab’s culture of inclusion and independence mitigated some of these challenges. Our findings align with the scholarly literature that suggests collaborative research opportunities can have beneficial outcomes, particularly for students from groups that are underrepresented in doctoral programs.

Research-based learning adopts a “learning-by-doing” approach toward teaching research. This article documents the experience of publishing a coauthored article with undergraduate students that grew out of a research-based–learning course at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. In particular, I reflect on the opportunities and challenges of engaging undergraduate students in research. The article demonstrates that research-based–learning courses must maintain a balance between the research process and research output. Too much focus on output overlooks students’ need to gain substantive knowledge, and the exclusive emphasis on the research process might reduce their motivation. Generally, students appreciate the autonomy and horizontality of relationships in research-based learning. Furthermore, the article shows that the knowledge and skills gained by students through research-based–learning courses facilitate their engagement in follow-up research projects, thereby paving the way for publishing research.

Both undergraduate students and faculty members face a challenging job market that requires innovative approaches to skill development and research products. Moreover, entrenched approaches to research and education reinforce traditional hierarchies, exclusionary norms, and exploitative practices. This article describes a lab-based pedagogical framework designed to support faculty research goals and student learning and, simultaneously, to attenuate patterns of historical exclusion. This approach leverages evidence-based best practices from experiential education, team-based workflows, an understanding of servant leadership, and “whole-person”–style mentorship models. We find that these tools advance faculty research goals (in terms of both quality and productivity), support student learning in ways beyond traditional undergraduate coursework, and disrupt patterns of historical exclusion. We provide qualitative evidence to support our model and discuss the hurdles and challenges still to be overcome.

In South Korea, government regulations constrain the resources of higher (tertiary) education, especially non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) departments. Resource constraints, in turn, reinforce a culturally Confucian hierarchy that restricts the participation of lower-rank members (e.g., high school and undergraduate students). This more-regulated, formal-education sector does not reflect the increasingly diverse cultural preferences (e.g., utilitarian and expressive) of Korean students. Many students, acting as consumers, exit to alternative sectors, including formal-educational institutions abroad and informal, private supplemental education at home, which offer more student research opportunities. This article develops and illustrates three theoretical propositions with relevant literature and secondary data as well as participant observations and interviews with Korea-based students. Arguably, our propositions and findings are relevant to other countries with gaps between formal education and consumer preferences and with consumer exit options.

What influenced women to volunteer for service in the US military during World War II? Whereas previous literature focused on potential intrinsic and extrinsic individual-level motives, we consider the broader structural context that may have played a role in female volunteerism. We leverage original data containing information on all volunteers who served in the US Army during World War II, with detailed county-level economic, political, and demographic data, to explore patterns of female volunteerism in the military. Our findings suggest that racism and sexism played a role in female volunteerism in many parts of the country, which may have undermined the government’s goals of mobilizing the entire country in support of the war effort.

This article reports new rankings of journal research productivity for PhD-granting political science departments during the past three decades. Using data on all authors and articles published in 19 leading general and subfield political science journals from 1990 to 2018, we compiled a count of department publications in these journals, weighted by the number of authors, department faculty size, and journal impact measures reported by Garand et al. (2009). We find that there is a discernible ranking of political science departments in terms of journal research productivity. The observed rankings are strongly but imperfectly related to the U.S. News & World Report (2022) reputational rankings of political science departments. We do find, however, that some political science departments have higher or lower levels of research productivity than would be suggested by their reputational rankings.

To what extent did the COVID-19 pandemic impact PhD candidates in political science? To what extent were their supervisors aware of this impact? PhD candidates in political science are not strangers to the lack of available and stable academic employment and the potentially isolating experience of research. Our survey of Australian PhD candidates in political science and international relations (N = 109) confirms that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these preexisting challenges. By comparing political science PhD candidates and their supervisors in relation to their experiences during the pandemic, our survey also reveals that there has been a disconnect between the two groups relative to the former’s experience of COVID-19. Although supervisors recognize the stressors that candidates have faced, they are more likely than candidates to report that department support relative to pandemic-related challenges was available, and they appear to be somewhat unaware of the impact that COVID-19 has had on candidates’ career plans. The survey also reveals substantial disagreement between candidates and supervisors about perceived career-mentoring styles. These points of disconnect must be addressed to ensure the success and well-being of current and future PhD candidates.

High-impact educational practices benefit undergraduate students in a variety of ways. These opportunities include student–faculty research, study-abroad and study-away programs, and internships, among others. This study focuses on one type of these high-impact practices: research. Research experiences foster student engagement and success, and they especially matter for marginalized and minoritized students, who all too often are underrepresented in these experiences. This article discusses creating, implementing, and experiencing equity-minded research opportunities for students from three perspectives: department head, faculty mentor, and undergraduate participants.

How can instructors best foster connections among students when learning is fully remote? This article describes a pedagogical experiment conducted in two large introductory political science courses at a large public university in the 2020–2021 academic year. We randomly assigned groups of students to different sets of instructions on how to study together remotely for an exam. Our strongest finding is that almost any effort by an instructor prompting students to work together helps students to feel more connected to one another; however, students often need to see and hear one another to feel connected. We find this to be tremendously encouraging—relatively easy interventions can result in significant improvements in learning.

This article investigates the dynamics of discrimination in political science PhD programs with a survey of current political science graduate students in the top 50 departments. The study focuses on mentorship, funding, sexual harassment, racism, homophobia, and labor exploitation: 20% of respondents reported labor exploitation, 19% experienced racial discrimination, 9% reported sexual harassment, and 6% experienced homophobia. Discrimination is uneven across individuals; some groups of graduate students experience widespread discrimination, especially racial discrimination, whereas other groups are largely unaware of these issues. We conducted a survey experiment to gauge the impact of misconduct on formal reporting mechanisms and find that hearing about racial discrimination has a chilling effect on reporting. We find that experiencing discrimination harms how satisfied students are in their program. We find that factors linked to student vulnerability, such as international status and funding, are significantly associated with harassment and that reporting discrimination predicts more discrimination.